In my next ten years

Tim McGraw has a song called, "In my next 30 years". In it, he outlines things he'll do differently in his next thirty years, as opposed to his first thirty. It was used for one of my high school graduation photo slideshows (which I have a copy of on a VHS stuffed in a storage box of preserved memories). The song always made me a little sad as it sort of emphasized the regrets of the last 30 years and the hopes of the next thirty.

And then it occurred to me this morning that it has been TEN YEARS since my amazing, awesome, life-changing, adventurous semester abroad in Spain!

TEN YEARS. I just can't get over it. And I find myself being such an "OLD" person by genuinely asking myself, "Where did the time go??!". (Because only people who have enough of a past in years can really understand the concept of that question.)

I mean, I know during those ten years I: graduated from college, got my first nursing jobs, got married, moved to Maine, completed grad school, got my first anesthesia job, moved to Texas, and traveled extensively... but despite all of that, it's hard to believe that such a significant event was ten years ago. In some ways it seems that certain events and certain phases of life will last forever. They're too big, too important, too momentous to move past. Sometimes it just seems that the moment we live in (whether it is good or bad) will simply last forever.

And yet here I am with my sophomore year of college 10 years in the rearview mirror. Nineteen. I don't feel all that much older or different than I did at 19, but at nineteen, I would have thought 29 and quickly approaching 30 was a bit old... just as I currently think that 39 and quickly approaching 40 sounds kind of old (for me!) right now.

As I reflected this morning over the last ten years, I found that I can say I am pleased with how I spent them... I feel that I enjoyed my time thoroughly and that I relatively crammed the years full of life. And since staying 19 forever was never an option, I feel like what I did was the next best option and that these last ten years have actually been a wonderful ten years of getting older.

I think that the reason I am overall pleased with my last ten years is because (I believe) I have lived intentionally. I have set and completed goals. And thinking about this has kind of inspired me to make sure I do the same with my next ten years. For the most part, it was rather easy to live intentionally during these past ten, as I was making big life/career decisions. I was still in the "planning" phase of my life... planning what I wanted to be... who I wanted to be "it" with... but now it seems it would be really easy to fall into a "rut" of just being... with a lot of my biggest decisions behind me, I think I could easily pass the next ten years without as much thought or attention. And then I'd REALLY be wondering, "WHERE DID THE TIME GO?!" ten years from now...

You won't always be in college. You won't always be a newlywed. You won't always be single. You won't always have small children. You won't always be where you are now. Maybe the best way to live "intentionally" is to simply live in the present. When I was in Spain I spent a lot of time talking about two different boys... which one did I love... which one loved me... and who would I end up marrying. Funny because it seems that all of my worries were sort of pointless, as it eventually just worked itself out in time. And now, here I am looking BACK on those memories, married for over six years...

For the most part, I think I lived "intentionally" and "in the present" during that phase of life... but how easy and tempting it was to get caught up in planning for the someday when I was grown up and married, rather than focusing on the adventure of my present circumstance of being 19 and living in Spain? Boys and marriage should have consumed a little less of my thoughts and worries. And so I want to learn from this memory. I don't want to find myself always worrying about my future... missing out on the right now. I've seen that the future usually just has a way of working itself out, so there really is no reason to worry about it at all... as a line from a favorite song says, "worrying is as about as good as trying to solve an algebra problem by chewing bubblegum".

So I choose to be present. I choose to live intentionally. I choose to continue to have and set goals. I choose to enjoy the process and journey of time accomplishing said goals. I choose to enjoy the life I have been given. And I choose to be youthful even though I can't stop the aging.

Where will I be in ten years? Only God knows. But I hope to make them count.